Raptor (50 page)

“You are the most shameless sinner I have ever met!” I exclaimed, when I could. “And here am I, falling in with your schemes. Deluding all of Vindobona… and that pitiable fat man…”

“May the devil take them napping,” said Thiuda, still laughing. “The fat man, whether he knows it or not, is no less of a fraud than you are. He may bear the name Amalric, but I can guarantee that he is not remotely related to the Ostrogoths’ royal Amal line. Delude him as long as you like.”

“Akh, it is enjoyable to do so,” I said, but then I sobered somewhat. “However, it may prove expensive. Did you see the other guests gaping from the windows and then sneaking to get a look at us in the entry hall? From their dress, they
are
all rich and prominent personages.”

Thiuda shrugged. “In my experience, the pompous and pretentious are even easier to deceive than suspicious landlords and tradesmen.”

“I mean, if I am to keep up appearances, I must invest in equally estimable apparel.”

Thiuda shrugged again. “If you wish. But I should say that you have done very well just as you are. You might try the effect of dressing even more grubbily and behaving even more vilely. But now, speaking of grubbiness, let us wash off some of our road dust. Then we will descend to the dining hall and scowl because the table is not set, and thereby force Amalric the Dumpling-Plump to placate us with quantities of his best wine.”

That is what we did. Since we had demanded to be fed at such an inconvenient hour, between midday prandium and evening cena, we were the only persons in the hall. And I must say that the hall was quite as inviting as that one Roman-style dining room I had seen at Basilea; its tables were covered with clean linen cloths and provided with couches instead of chairs, stools or benches. Thiuda and I reclined at one of the tables, and impatiently drummed our fingers on it, and Dumpling came running. He apologized profusely because the meal was not waiting for us, and yelled for his sons to bring wine.

They came in carrying an obviously heavy amphora. Both Thiuda and I regarded it with some surprise and happy anticipation, because, in these days of modern barrels and casks, it is so rare to see a genuine, old-fashioned, baked-clay amphora. Besides, this was one of the sort that is not flat on the bottom but tapers to a point, the kind that cannot be stood upright. So we knew that it had been sunk in the earth of the deversorium’s cellar, for its contents to mature and ripen, and that gave promise that it held no common taberna wine.

Nevertheless, when Dumpling broke the seal and let a small ladle down into the amphora and then tipped the ruby liquid into a goblet, Thiuda peremptorily grabbed the drink, suspiciously smelled of it, sipped of it, rolled it around in his mouth and rolled his eyes as well. I think he might have dared to declare the wine unfit and called for a different amphora to be broached had he and I not been very thirsty from traveling. So he grudgingly grunted, “A decent Falernian. It will do,” and let the grateful Dumpling fill goblets for us both.

Then, when the food began to arrive—and it came in courses, the first being a hot soup of calves’ brains and peas—I ignored it until Thiuda had ceremoniously taken a taste. Only after a suspenseful pause would Thiuda pronounce the dish “tolerable” or “adequate” and once even “satisfactory,” which made Dumpling almost dance for joy. But, after each of those little games, Thiuda would dive into the provender and eat of everything as ravenously as I did Between the two main dishes—Danuvius eel broiled with herbs, then braised hare in wine gravy—I paused to belch and to take breath and to ask Thiuda, “Are you really departing so soon? To go and revisit your birthplace?”

“For that, ja, but not just for that. It has been a long time, too, since I have seen my father. So next I will wend my way on down the Danuvius into Moesia, to the city of Novae. That is the capital city of all us Ostrogoths, so I should find him there.”

“I shall be sorry to see you go.”

“Vái. You are fully recovered from your snakebite, and now you are well established here as a personage. You will be treated as such. Take advantage of it. Vindobona is a pleasant place in which to pass the winter. As for me, I will spend tonight at that widow’s house, so I can get early away without having to wait for stable grooms to wake and fetch me my horse.”

“Then let me say now, Thiuda, how much I have enjoyed your company. And I am indebted to you for having saved my life. I know you will not accept thanks, you stubborn Ostrogoth, but I hope someday to have the chance to do you a good turn.”

“Very well,” he said genially. “Whenever you hear that King Babai and his Sarmatae have again started to rampage somewhere, go there. You will find me in combat against them, and I heartily invite you to fight beside me.”

“I will. On my word, I will. Huarbodáu mith gawaírthja.”

“Thags izvis, Thorn, but I care not to fare always in peace. To a warrior, peace is only a corroding rust. Say to me as I say to you: huarbodáu mith
blotha.”

“Mith blotha,” I echoed, and raised my goblet to salute him with the wine the color of blood.

I did remain in Vindobona throughout the winter, and longer, because there is much in that city to divert and entertain a person—or I should say a
personage,
one who can afford the diversions offered, and thereby merit an invitation to partake of them.

While I possessed nothing like the fortune I pretended to have, the pretense was enough. I maintained my haughty attitude toward inferiors, and acted as if most people
were
my inferiors, and that made them bow and scrape and defer to me as if they concurred in their being inferior. But I allowed myself to unbend toward persons of approximately the same lofty station I had assumed. So I let myself become sociable with a select few of my fellow guests in the deversorium, which seemed to flatter and honor them. They introduced me to their better-class acquaintances residing in the city, and those introduced me to others. Eventually I was being invited to the homes of Vindobona’s most prominent citizens, attending intimate family gatherings as well as the grand feasts and elaborate festivals that enliven the winter season there, and I made many friends of my own among the city’s notables.

It may be hard to believe, but, during all the time I spent in Vindobona, not a single person—not even any of those who became my friends—ever inquired of me what exactly
was
my status or distinction or lineage or rightful title, or how I had acquired my ostensible wealth. Those close to me called me familiarly “Thorn”; others of my equals more formally said “clarissimus” or the Gothic equivalent, “liudaheins.”

I might add that I was not the only person in those circles affecting a pose. Many others, even those of Germanic lineage, had adopted Roman manners to the extent that they were unable—or pretended to be unable—to pronounce the Gothic rune “thorn,” and the “kaun-plus-hagl” runes as well. So they took great care to avoid those “th” and “kh” sounds, and invariably spoke my name in the Roman fashion, as Torn or Tornaricus.

I hasten to say that, while I continued my imposture and continued to be accepted at the high value I had set upon myself, I never used my position to defraud anyone materially. I even, contrary to Thiuda’s suggestion, at intervals paid the deversorium’s proprietor what I owed him to date—and also ceased to call him contemptuously Dumpling, but began to address him as Amalric. Those concessions made him, too, a friend of mine, and he gave me many useful hints as to how best to enjoy and profit from my being accepted as an equal among Vindobona’s best families.

Early on, I decided to dress the part that I was playing. I informed Amalric that, although I was content to travel without ostentation, only woodsily garbed, I now desired to embellish my wardrobe, and I asked him to tell me where to find the city’s most exclusive clothiers, cobblers, jewelers and such.

“Akh, Your Worship!” he exclaimed. “A man of your station does not go to
them;
they come to you. Allow me to summon them hither. Be assured that I will choose for you only those who purvey to the legatus and the praefectus and the herizogo and all the other liudaheins gentry.”

So, the next day, there came to my chambers a sartor and his assistants, to take my measurements and to give me my choice of diverse patterns of garments and numerous bolts of cloth. There were cottons from Kos, linens from Camaracum, woolens from Mutina, even goose-summer from Gaza—and an incredibly fine, soft, lovely, almost fluid fabric that I had never seen before.

“Silk,” said the sartor. “It is spun and woven by a people called the Seres. I am told that they make it from a kind of fleece, or perhaps a down, that they comb from the leaves of a certain tree that grows only in their land. I do not even know where their land lies, except that it is far away to the east. So rare and precious is this textile that only rich men like yourself, illustrissimus, can afford to wear it.”

Then he told me the price—not by the standard cloth measure of tres pedes, not even by the pes, but by the
uncia.
I tried not to look stunned, but I thought
Iésus,
spun gold would cost less, and I knew very well that the illustrious Thornareikhs was not rich enough to afford such an extravagance. I did not tell the sartor that, of course; I mumbled something about the silk’s appearing too frail for the wear I would give it.

“Frail?! Why, illustrissimus, a silk tunic will outlast
armor!”

I gave him a hard look and he quailed and was silent, and I chose cheaper fabrics, but only after much deliberation and much grumbling about their poor quality. And I picked out patterns for tunics, undercoats, trousers, a woolen winter cloak and even a Roman-style toga that the sartor insisted I would need “for state occasions.”

On another day there came to me a sutor, also with patterns and with swatches of felt and leather—every kind of hide from soft roebuck to garish crocodilus—and I commissioned him to make for me various pairs of indoor sandals, street shoes latcheted in the Scythian manner and a petasus hat for winter wear. On another day there came an unguentarius with a casket full of phials, which he opened one after another to let me sample the scents of the perfumes they contained.

“This one, illustrissimus, is the essence of the flowers from the plain of Enna in Trinacria, where even the hounds are confounded in their hunting by the ambient aromas of so many fragrant blossoms. And this one is the pure attar imported from the Valley of Roses in Midland Dacia, that valley where the inhabitants allow not a single other plant of any kind to grow, lest it pollute the impeccability of the roses. Then I have this other attar of roses which is less expensive, because it comes from Paestum, where the roses bloom twice each year.”

Partly from thriftiness, partly because I could smell no difference between the two rose perfumes, I chose the cheaper. On another day—or, rather, at night—there came an aurifex, to show me rings and pins and armlets and fibulae all ready to wear, plus many unset gems with which he could fashion any sort of jewelry to my own design. He showed me diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, colored glass, beryls, jacinths and others, some loose, some set in gold, some in silver.

“If you prefer not so flagrantly to flaunt your wealth, illustrissimus, here are various gems set in the metal called Corinthium aes, a copper alloyed with small amounts of gold and silver to make it blaze far more brilliantly than other copper. It got its name, as perhaps you know, illustrissimus, because it was invented—or rather, discovered—when in ancient times the Romans burned Corinth and all the precious metals there puddled together.”

So, thriftily again, I selected from the aurifex’s wares only two matching fibulae made of the Corinthium aes and set with deep-purple almandines. All in all, I think I was not grossly prodigal in my spending, and the things I chose to buy and wear were nowise flamboyant. For example, when the sartor returned with the clothes I had ordered—each garment only temporarily basted together—for his final fitting of them on me, he said:

“I have of course not presumed to add any colors yet, neither to the hems of your tunics or toga nor to the panels of your cloak. Having consistently addressed you as illustrissimus, and not yet having been corrected, I could not be sure whether that is indeed your rank—in which case you would naturally wish your clothes adorned with green—or if perhaps you are in fact of patricius status and therefore merit the purple. Nor have you indicated whether you wish the hems and panels merely dyed or done in figures.”

“Nothing,” I said, grateful that his babbling had enlightened me. “No colors, no figures. I prefer the materials unadorned and in their natural colors—white, buff, dun, whatever.”

The sartor clapped his hands delightedly. “Euax! Now there speaks a man of good taste! I perceive your reasoning, illustrissimus. Nature did not make those fabrics gaudy, so why should their wearer? Why, the very simplicity of your garb will make you stand out in any company, more distinctively than if you wore all the gauds of a peacock.”

I half suspected that he might be merely flattering me, but evidently he was not. When later I wore those clothes to the gatherings to which I was invited, several eminent and intelligent personages, far more worldly than I was, paid me sincere compliments on the tastefulness of my dress.

That little episode with the sartor taught me a valuable lesson: to keep my mouth shut when I was confronted with some subject that I ought to know about but did not. With my mouth closed, I could not utter any embarrassing disclosure of my callowness. And if I stayed silent long enough, someone or something would let drop a hint that would give me some grasp of the matter.

On occasion, when I prudently kept silent, masking my ignorance with a seeming disdain for speech, I not only might avoid acting foolishly, but might be deemed by others to be wiser than they. One night, after a dinner in the triclinium of Vindobona’s elderly and massively fat praefectus, Maecius, the women had retired from the room and we men were embarking on a serious drinking session, when a messenger slipped in and unobtrusively handed something to our host. The praefectus looked at it, then coughed for attention. Everyone stopped conversing and turned to him.